This invention relates to a bottle closure having a peelable gasket which is adapted to be used for sales promoting purposes. More specifically, it relates to a sales promoting-purpose bottle closure having a gasket which is rendered more easily peelable than heretofore by forming a tear strip portion.
Many types of sales promoting-purpose bottle closures have been suggested (see, for example, U.S. Pat. Nos. 1,711,469, 3,233,770, 3,257,021, 3,361,281, 3,581,690, and 3,633,781). In these conventional sales promoting-purpose bottle closures, the gasket is adapted to be removed from the closure shell by inserting a finger nail or a pointed tool between the peripheral end of the gasket and the closure shell and picking it upwardly. Although the gasket is bonded weakly to the inner bottom surface of the closure shell to enable the gasket to be removed easily, the bond force is still relatively high because of the need to prevent the detaching of the gasket by vibration and other physical actions during the transportation of bottle closures and a bottle sealing operation or to ensure good bottle sealing. The gasket, however, is frequently difficult to pick up, especially when a finger nail is used. Moreover, it is risky, especially for children, to lift the gasket by using a sharp tool, and in fact, an injury caused by this effort has been reported.
There has been, therefore, an increasing demand in the art for sales promoting-purpose bottle closures provided with gaskets that can be peeled off easily by hand without using a sharp tool.